Shells
by hell-whim
Summary: Mai leaves. Post-canon AU, Maiko, companion to Failures


**Title:** Shells

**Summary:** Mai leaves.

**Warning: **non-graphic infant death

**Notes:** Credit goes to swan2swan on tumblr for Mai's parents' names.

**Shells**

Mai knows something is wrong when the midwife sends Zuko away.

"This is women's work," she says, far too cheerily. "Forgive me, Fire Lord. Can't have so many distractions!"

And Zuko simply accepts it, conflict showing through his face for only half a second before he bends down and kisses her head.

"I won't be far," he says and then leaves Mai to do this all alone. They had been fighting earlier that morning, over something stupid, picking at little scabs just to make the other bleed. He'd thought at first that she was faking the pains.

The attendants—_liars_, all of them, with their saccharine smiles and fake calm and assurances that everything will be fine—gather around the bed with hot water and cloths, as the midwife speaks over the gentle swell of Mai's belly, one warm hand resting on Mai's knee.

"It will be over soon, my lady," she says, absent joy or encouragement.

The pain is unbearable, worse than Mai had been promised, worse that she can handle. And the heat as well—someone is bending the fire higher, red-gold flickers consuming the bed, consuming her, as she screams. She can imagine Zuko on the other side of the door, flooded with infuriating helplessness.

At the height of her agony, the midwife pulls the baby from Mai's body. On instinct, Mai reaches out, but the midwife stands, cuts the cord, and moves quickly to the fire. She sees enough to know that it's a girl, but the baby makes no noise, and Mai strains to see any activity beyond the bed as the attendants swarm in.

"What—what's happening?" Zuko asks from the corridor, and the midwife nods to an attendant, who hurriedly opens the door. His eyes land on Mai first, and she watches a quick series of emotions flicker behind his eyes—joy, supplanted by fear, confusion, concern. He crosses the room to her, to her waiting arms.

"Zuko," Mai says into his shoulder. "I—"

On some unspoken cue, the room empties, and the midwife approaches. The baby is wrapped up now, cleaned of the detritus of birth, her closed little face a grey pinprick in the white swaddling. Mai and Zuko break apart.

"I'm sorry," the midwife says heavily.

Zuko takes the baby—she easily fits the span of one hand—as the midwife explains. Born far too early for any medicinal arts to be of use, the baby is ill-equipped for her entrance to the world and will exit soon.

"It may be a few hours," the midwife says, "or a few days. But eventually, she will stop breathing and will not start again. There is nothing to be done."

Zuko thanks her blankly, and she leaves. Mai remains sunken in the pillows, numb, hands folding over her still-swollen belly. Silently, he holds the baby out to her, but Mai looks away.

Three days. Three days of fire and fear and an echoing, hollow ache. Zuko doesn't sleep, but Mai can't help it, dozing fitfully, woken at times by the breeze, by attendants flitting in and out, by the unsettling lack of sound. Sometime around sunset on the last day, Mai is jolted from dreams of the ocean and jasmine blossoms.

Zuko is singing quietly, half-facing the fireplace, swaddling draped over one arm. She can see gold flashes of his other hand moving in the firelight, back and forth over the baby's chest. A familiar lullaby trips off his tongue—Mai closes her eyes for a moment, caught in some nebulous web of childhood memory, when his voice catches on something.

In the darkness, all she hears is the quiet crackle of the fire and someone's ragged breathing, and then Zuko, whispering.

"Please?"

Someone has made the arrangements already. The next morning, two attendants help Mai rise unsteadily from the bed while the midwife collects the body from Zuko. Washed, perfumed, and dressed in a burial costume that is much too large: the body is arranged in its coffin, and Mai takes her place beside the throne.

There is an unaccounted flatness to the palace now. The people and furnishings seem cut from the same dull parchment, shadow-puppets set against a screen, made to bow and light incense and murmur apologies, pushed along by lethargic wires and a pair of erratic, invisible hands. Even Zuko is lessened, with his empty face and fingers curled over the arms of his throne.

She wants to scream. The baby tore something from inside her during the birth, and now every step is plagued by a furious burning. Twenty paces from the cemetery gate to the first turn, a hundred more to the royal tombs, the attendants watching every movement carefully, braced for the coming collapse. Zuko never looks back.

Mai is returned to bed immediately following the funeral and stays long enough to miss most of the enforced national garment-rending and wailing. The midwife returns to examine her on the sixth day.

"You are too small," she says, hands cold and ungentle. "Starved yourself and her—for what? There are other avenues for your husband's amusement, my lady. _You_ have a duty."

The vision strikes Mai suddenly, as the midwife packs away her balms and implements: Ursa, sitting in this same bed, hearing those same ugly words from that same woman.

"Get out," Mai says quietly, when the midwife turns to offer her goodbyes.

Mai resumes her royal duties, entertaining the nobles' pity, organizing charity for the poor, attending the opening of a new academy in the city. There is nothing else to do, until Aang arrives.

Zuko meets his friends at the courtyard, leaving Mai to arrange the welcome and shush the attendants' twittering about the Avatar and his water-peasant consort. The old racism is hard to stamp out, even in herself, and Mai sends everyone away with a growing ache behind her eyes.

Still Zuko will not look at her, staring instead into his teacup until Katara reaches out for him. Mai had only been half-listening to the conversation, contemplating her own hands, but she starts with an unexpected little spark of jealousy.

"Zuko, I...I am _so_ sorry."

Mai watches him nod from the corners of her eyes, his gaze unfocused, distant.

"There will be other children," Zuko says, like a decree. "We are still young."

A wave of nausea slams into her, and Mai closes her eyes.

"Other children," she echoes, boiling.

The bedchamber that night is the same and somehow different.

"We removed the...unnecessary furnishings," an attendant says delicately, following the line of Mai's gaze to the empty corners of the room. "Will there be anything else, my lady?"

"Light a fire. Then leave."

The ache behind her eyes has grown to an angry roar. She paces a wide circle around the bed, fingers pressed to her brow. The emptiness folds in around her, and the _silence_—just the crackle of the fire and someone's ragged breathing. Heat rises and spreads across her face. She allows herself only a few tears.

Zuko's heavy footsteps approach, and Mai cleans her face with the edge of one pure-white sleeve, turning away from the door just as he enters. He hesitates a moment on the threshold.

"Aang and Katara are settled. We'll leave for the south in a few days."

She doesn't trust herself to nod, sliding instead onto the divan, arranging her body as though for display. Zuko undresses, keeping the bed between them.

"I wish to go see Azula," Mai says to the ceiling, and he pauses.

"Yes, of course. Whatever you would like."

She is unspecific about a time-frame, selecting only two attendants to accompany her, and they spend the morning packing far too many clothes and supplies. Zuko arranges for a small ship and sends a messenger hawk ahead, and then follows Mai down to the dock in early evening. They are each wrapped in white robes—the traditional mourning period is at least a month, and they are both bound by the ornate bindings of office.

Katara and Aang, equally formal, watch from a respectful distance.

Mai can't say goodbye, and Zuko never will, leaning instead to kiss her. She breaks it quickly, and feels his hand fall from her shoulder as she walks away.

On the ship, she is immediately sick and confines herself, locking out the attendants' obtrusive questioning. She spends most of the journey that way, face-down in bed, mentally tracing the path of Zuko's journey to the south. He will find comfort in his friends, perhaps, and in his work. More than he would ever find in her, anyway.

Three days of pain and nausea bring her to the shores of Insanity Island—an indelicate, unofficial name the crewmen mutter behind their hands. The captain speaks through her cabin door, as the attendants tighten the binding over her breasts.

"The head physician has prepared a reception, my lady, and opens his personal villa for your use."

She rejects the reception, ducking out of the ceremony when it is only half-over. She is breaking enough protocol to warrant a reprimand from the eldest attendant, who she fires on the spot.

"Yes, my lady," the old woman says, and bows herself out of Mai's life.

Azula is waiting in a well-cleaned corner room, hands immobilized in a straight-jacket, grinning.

"There you are!" she says, as though Mai had only just stepped out and returned. "Where's the tea?"

A service is set, and a silent nurse brings the cup to her lips when asked.

"Like a cocoon," Azula says between sips, laughing. "Did it rip you open? Where is the little butterfly?"

"How did you know?"

The nurse's eyes flicker to Mai's and then away again.

"_They_ told me," Azula says with a shrug, a sinuous roll of her shoulders beneath the jacket, like a snake shedding its skin. "They think family connection will _heal_ me. So I'm an auntie!"

"Was," Mai says quietly. "The baby died."

Azula leans back in her chair, blowing hair from her face rudely.

"Hardly a surprise," she sighs. "Dear Mai, always dead inside. What good could ever grow from _that_?"

The flatness of the palace has followed her, making sets and costumes of the rooms and patients' robes. Azula could be its cold apex, a shuffling, squirming column of ash which folds out from the wall and then back in. She is utterly indifferent to her nurses and to Mai, indifferent to her confinement, to the food, to the dying garden.

That night, Mai returns to the borrowed villa and does not sleep. She begins a letter to Zuko but can't finish it. _My dear husband—Zuko—Fire Lord—_each greeting written over the other, the first line a slow evolution of _I miss you—I'm sorry—I don't know how—_and then the parchment floats into the fire, and she rests her head on the desk and sighs.

She is never allowed to remove the jacket, but Mai eventually convinces the physicians that Azula can be trusted alone with her. They take daily walks through the garden, Azula curled against Mai's side.

"What did she look like?"

"Grey. Distant," Mai sighs. "Like a wisp of smoke."

Azula's questions are less cruelty than curiosity, face screwing up in concentration as she chews the few strands of hair that reach her mouth. Mai holds her steady with an arm around Azula's waist, steering them between the falling leaves, a circuitous maze centered around Azula's empty room.

She has no personal effects, as the nurses are adamant about giving her nothing that could be refashioned as a weapon. So Mai brings in her own combs and brushes, a basin, an array of soaps and perfumes. Azula holds perfectly still, neither welcoming nor refusing Mai's touch.

The soap is an import from the Northern Water Tribe, a thick pinkish lather made of crushed flowers and a certain rare seaweed. The basin was her mother's, passed from bride to bride until Mai simply took it from her parents' house. The brushes are a wedding gift from the mayor of Yu Dao, carved from mammoth-boar tusk and inlaid with delicate gold.

"What's it like being married?" Azula asks, eyes closed, as Mai gently works her fingers through a knot.

"I don't know. What's it like not being married?"

"I don't know," Azula echoes, frowning. "I don't think I've ever been in love. What's that like?"

"It hurts."

She brushes out Azula's hair until it's dry and shines, and then carefully twists the strands into a braid.

"I'm going to go away now," Azula says, nodding with authority. "You make me so tired, Mai. Must save strength for darling brother."

"You think Zuko will come visit?"

"Eventually."

Azula smiles with the old ferocity.

"When he's ready to be punished."

And with that she's suddenly gone, eyes vacant, jaw slack. The nurses rush in to put Azula away, like folding a doll back in its case. Mai stands behind the chair, empty-handed.

She manages to finish a letter that night. A pure formality: no greeting, no good-bye. He'll know who it's from by the seal.

The ship reaches Kyoshi's harbor the following week, in the middle of a storm, so there is no reception. Ty Lee approaches her on the dock alone, uncertainty shining through the heavy makeup.

"You can hug me," Mai sighs, and Ty Lee does, bursting with nervous laughter. Her arms close tight around Mai, who hides the wince.

A small escort sweeps Mai up the hill, through streets still scarred by Zuko's anger. But everywhere she looks there is a new little house, and a new little family settling in it, round mothers sweeping off terraces as chubby, wrinkled children play in the dirt. There is another stab of pain through her stomach, an echo of Ty Lee's too-tight embrace.

"It'll be so great to have you here!" Ty Lee says, oblivious.

"I _am_ here."

The flatness is inescapable, nipping her heels as Mai stops on the edge of the governor's garden. He and his wife bow themselves out from the walls of their house.

"No, I'm sorry," Mai says. "I don't wish to impose."

They graciously offer her a room—Ty Lee lives in a common house with the other warriors and bounces along in Mai's wake, inspecting the modest appointments.

"It is nothing compared to the splendor of your palace, I am sure," the governor says, conciliatory.

"It's perfect," Mai replies. "It will suffice."

The governor is a solid man, reserved, robust, proud of his people and his family. His wife is somewhat fond of obeisance, accompanying each sentence with a little bow and an unabashed lack of eye contact. Everything is_ my lady_ and _my pleasure_ and _our honor_. Their daughter, a lithe woman near Mai's age, simply stares.

The journey has taken its slow toll on Mai—she retires immediately after the evening meal, lowering herself painfully onto the borrowed cushion. The attendant flits around, removing tight-laced boots from Mai's swollen feet, bringing in water and ointments.

"A cool compress, my lady," she says. "Shall I adjust the binding?"

"It's fine," Mai snaps, pushing away the woman's unwelcome hands. "The midwife said to leave it."

"Perhaps a few more weeks," the attendant says, nodding, neutral. "I had an aunt—her milk stopped after a few months."

Ty Lee helps Mai lose the attendant in the market the next morning and then loops her arm through Mai's.

"Everything's so small here," Ty Lee sighs, unabashed. Mai watches her sideways. "Nothing like our old cities, but there's the mainland and the harvest festivals and the circus comes around."

She squeals, seized by an idea, and gallops around Mai, yanking her to a stop.

"You could train with us! I'm sure the girls won't mind a new recruit, and you look like you use some activity."

Ty Lee's hand pinches playfully around Mai's arm, fingertips easily touching on the other side.

"I can't."

"Oh, come on, Mai. We'll even let you win sometimes."

"I _can't_."

Her eyes flicker down to Mai's flat belly and bound breasts, and then quickly back up again.

"Oh," Ty Lee says, bright but beginning to deflate. "Well. What would you like to do?"

Nothing. Nothing at all.

Ty Lee is at an utter loss, and the month passes slowly. She devises presentations and activities, and the governor is eager to show that Zuko's reparations have not been wasted. Mai applauds and gasps and sighs at the appropriate pauses, each day longer than the last, each night stretching on in its emptiness.

She wonders at first if the news has even reached the Earth Kingdom—some women meet her eyes defiantly, almost triumphantly, while others briefly take in her pressed appearance and simply carry on with their chores. But Ty Lee is a reliable gossip, and soon enough the shared knowledge is a certainty. Everyone has condolences, and advice which Mai must swallow.

"Maybe it was for the best. We're still all so young," Ty Lee says while Mai picks over mangoes in the market. "You can always try again."

"You Fire Nation women, so small. Should have been born wider," the governor's wife tells Mai, with a quiet smile, staring into the tea kettle as she pours. "I had some difficulty, but I never complained. Eventually we were blessed with our dear daughter."

"Consider it retribution," that selfsame daughter snarls, scraping the terrace clean with a broom. Mai stops in the doorway, half-soaked in a cool beam of moonlight. "For every son and daughter of the Earth Kingdom, slaughtered by your people. A just universe would strike you barren and see your precious Fire Lord assassinated by his own greedy generals."

Ty Lee explains, the next morning, that a regiment of Kyoshi men had been killed outside Ba Sing Se, shortly before the end of the war. Included in their number was the daughter's fiance.

"She probably doesn't mean anything by it," Ty Lee says with a shrug. "Everybody handles grief differently."

"What have you ever grieved for?" Mai wonders aloud, lacking the strength to be regretful. Ty Lee's offended silence separates them for a few evenings.

Autumn gathers slowly over the island, painting the leaves in lethargic swaths of brown and gold. There are harvest festivals, as promised, and an influx of tourists from the mainland. The bindings are no longer necessary, but Mai keeps the simple white robes.

The lack of adornment is a ward against the encroaching flatness, which swallows the island. It seeps off the ship, dripping into the harbor, rolling up with the tide. Soon enough the round women and their wrinkled children have become hollow, painted faces on a rough wood carving.

"If you're so bored," Ty Lee says one morning, in her bitingly sweetest voice, "maybe you should go home. To your husband."

But Zuko has not sent for her, has not sent so much as a letter or an edict—she can assume nothing from his silence. Distance means any news will be delayed as well. He could be dead, and she wouldn't learn of it for weeks.

The empty houses and empty people blend together, melting into a dull roll of green. Mai leaves before annoyance becomes resentment.

"You'll be happy at home again," Ty Lee says brightly, with a brisk hug and a short wave. Then she turns away from the dock and doesn't look back.

The ship stops for minor maintenance at a Fire Nation outpost.

"The Fire Lord is working to silence rebellion in the colonies," the overseer informs her. "He has sent no messages for you, my lady."

At least it's somewhere to send the hawk.

"Sail north," she orders the captain. "The exile colony."

It has another name—some dreary combination of symbols that mean _oasis_ or _rest_ or _peace—_but Mai has always thought of the colony as it really is: a holding cell, for political dissidents that are not quite dangerous enough for prison, but not trustworthy enough to roam free. The population is mostly innocent farmers, who cherish the soil and have little time for gossip, sprinkled through with the most spineless of Ozai's sycophants. Her parents have a house near the coast.

They are waiting in state for her: best robes, hair and faces neat, arranged on the steps as if for a dour painting. Tom-Tom breaks the tableau first, launching himself into Mai's knees. Mu Ji's eyes flicker between her silent husband and Mai, unable to move without permission.

"I suppose, if I must," Mao says finally, and steps aside to let his daughter into the house.

They are all excessively polite to her, at first. Mu Ji pours kettle after kettle of soothing tea, taking credit for the cook's work, delicately lowering herself onto cushions and sliding silently through corridors. She keeps all inquires superficial, making no direct reference of Mai's appearance, of her travels, of her obvious lack. Tom-Tom recites history in the evenings, as entertainment.

"And..and then, in the first year of the War, Fire Lord Sozin begat Azulon."

Tom-Tom cheats, glancing down at his scroll, and is encouraged by his mother's small nod.

"Fire Lord Azulon begat Iroh and Fire Lord Ozai, who begat Azula and Fire Lord Zuko."

"Who begat no one and nothing," Mao finishes.

"Please," Mu Ji says quietly, eyes on the floor.

"Have you finished being hospitable now?" Mai asks, hands folded over her white-draped knees.

"I have finished with your imposition, _my lady_."

Tom-Tom disappears into his mother's lap.

"Do you enjoy the Fire Lord's largesse? He chose this estate himself," Mai says evenly.

"How generous," Mao mutters.

He moves like a cat through the firelight, stalking across the hearth towards her and then back to the wall again. The last five years have made him hard and bitter, and it shows in the ugly turn of his mouth.

"I have no complaint about my _lot_," he snarls, "only the waste of effort. Do you know what it was like, a non-bender, attempting to rise within the Nation? Years of negotiations, of maneuvering, manipulating myself to Ozai's inner circle—all to assure _you_ would become the Crown Prince's wife, and what have I to show for it?"

"If you have some complaint about the grounds," Mai says quietly, "I can arrange for improvements."

His shame presses her flat, and she is consumed: concave now where she was once briefly convex, squeezed of color and voice. She blends perfectly with the snow piling against the walls.

After their brief confrontation, Mao will not speak to her or even make eye contact, flaunting his disrespect as a kind of impotent revenge. Winter closes them in the house, and Mai becomes once again the silent little girl, head down, waiting out her father's anger.

Tom-Tom is still far too young to understand, or even to be told, but he keeps close to Mai, worming beneath her blankets and crawling around her empty lap. His only memories of her are a parade and the wedding, and he searches Mai's empty pockets every day, for treats.

"Mama says you're sad," he whispers in her ear, pushing his little body between her closed arms. It's near midnight, almost the new year, and Tom-Tom has taken to sleeping in Mai's bed. She adjusts the blanket around his bright face. "She says I should leave you alone."

"I'm not sad," Mai whispers back. "I'm nothing."

Winter wanes with no word from Zuko. A local functionary brings news that he has at least returned to the capitol, and Mao takes a sort of humiliated satisfaction from the silence.

"A wife judged worthless is soon replaced," he says. Mai can't summon the strength to defend her fractured marriage and simply retreats.

It is Mu Ji who finally convinces her to leave.

She enters while Mai is bathing and quietly dismisses the attendant. Mai is buried in water up to her chin, following her mother's movement with dull eyes.

"When you were a little girl, I would wrap you up in a big towel after a bath and brush out your hair."

"In front of the fireplace," Mai murmurs. "You'd rock me and sing me to sleep. Everything was warm and safe."

She sighs, eyes falling closed, as Mu Ji's fingers gently unwind her soaked braid.

"You can't carry on here. You don't deserve this."

"Neither do you," Mai returns, less fire than exhaustion. "You know, you and Tom-Tom could come live in the palace. Be rid of him."

"I've chosen my lot," Mu Ji says, so quietly the splash almost silences her, "as have you."

"Some choice. It's pure luck I fell in love with him first. Father would have had his way, regardless."

"Your father is...damaged by circumstance."

"He is just _damaged_. We all are."

Mu Ji helps her rise from the tub and slip into the nearby robe, glancing over Mai's body with concern.

"You have no use as a skeleton."

"Because that's all that matters? My _use_?"

There is nothing left inside her to be savage—Mai simply collapses into the cushions piled before the fire, pulling the robe tight against any warmth. Mu Ji kneels behind her, combs already in hand, working through Mai's hair in small sections.

"Though it doesn't matter. The Fire Lord is free to consort with whomsoever he wishes. Any child produced of such union would become his heir, with all the titles and privileges inherent."

"That's your father talking."

"That doesn't mean it's untrue."

"Mai..."

She rolls her shoulders, dislodging Mu Ji's hands, drawing her knees to her chest.

"I wouldn't mind. I'd probably just fade away."

"Zuko would never do that to you."

"Because Father didn't? And Ozai didn't?"

"Mai, please—"

"Don't touch me!"

She shrugs away her mother's hands again, twisting away towards the fire.

"It was supposed to be easier, away from there. No judgment from the servants, no pity from the people, and Zuko..."

Mu Ji rises, packing away the brushes and soaps. She turns back slowly, hands folded beneath her sleeves.

"Mai, my little seashell," she says firmly. "You gain nothing in waiting. You must return to your husband, and meet whatever fate the spirits have granted you."

So she does. The illusion is long shattered, her childhood nickname now a disconsolate prophecy, and Mai folds away her white robes. The attendant packs everything else, and the waiting carriage is loaded. Only Tom-Tom is willing to brave the mud, hugging Mai as tight as his little arms can manage.

"I'll send for you in the summer," she says. "We'll go to the Festival."

Mao disappears back into the house before carriage has even left the garden.

The crew is surprised to see her, scrambling up from their tea and Pai Sho.

"At your command, my lady," the captain says, bowing low. "The ice is broken. We can cast off within the hour."

"Home," Mai sighs, staring into the grey horizon. "It's time to go home."


End file.
